CD's are a type of technology. Technology gets cheaper and better with time. Look at the personal computer over the last 20 years. Comparing CD's to oil is not really a fair comparison.
My comment about China was sarcasm, by the way. Usually, when Wal-Mart forces vendors to lower their price, it means jobs are likely to be outsourced to cheaper labor markets (ie China). However, I think we will still want our home grown musicians and that our musicians will not be replaced by cheaper foreign workers.
Therefore, this is a scenario in which Wal-Mart is bringing the consumer lower prices, but not necessarily eliminating US manufacturing jobs in the process. I am from North Carolina, a state that used to have a strong textile industry. We definitely feel the job loss due to outsourcing. And we can blame Wal-Mart and all the other big box retailers, if we want to.
Who knows, maybe the jobs of record company executives will be outsourced. This might make punk music fans happy.
Does this mean that our musicians will be outsourced to China due to cheaper labor?
... Obviously not.
This is one of the few industries that can withstand price reductions with little or no job loss. I am glad Wal-Mart is keeping the music industry in check. The price of a cheap plastic CD has hovered at $15 for two decades. We consumers deserve a price reduction.
Be careful about your company's 401k plan. I am sure everybody knows that the key to investing is diversification. No matter where you invest, you should always have a diversified portfolio. However, many companies fund the 401k plan with stock options or company stock. This means your 401k plan is not diversified. This is extraordinarily harmful to those who stake their retirement on 401k's. Also, the company never contributes cash to the plan (stock options are a non-cash expense).
To all the employees compensated by stock options....
Be careful! Stock options are a mess. A stock option is a non-cash expense that is not recorded on financial statements (the Balance Sheet, the Income Statement, the Statement of Cash Flows). When you accept a stock option, you are choosing to replace real cash with a stock option. The option is income and you are taxed as if it was income. The option may have time limits on it. Your company better be really valuable by the time you can exercise your option.
Because high-tech firms have no cash or captial, they compensate employees with stock options. But think about it... if a firm has no cash, how do they have any value? Isn't the market going to figure this out soon? How will you ever cash in?
The accounting rules are changing, despite Silicon Valley lobbyist attempts. New rules will make companies EXPENSE options in the accounting period in which they were issued. This will have 2 immediate effects:
Companies won't issue as many options b/c they will reduce earnings.
The company's income will be reduced by reporting options and the stock price will fall accordingly.
One more accounting benefit from stock options: When you finally exercise the option, the company pays the difference b/t option price and market stock price. This expense is tax deductible. By reduces taxes, you create a "gain". This gain is booked as income from continuing operations. Some high tech firms derive over 50% of such income from "gains" due to stock options being exercised.
Investors expect income from continuing operations to be a real indicator of a companies ability to produce future earnings. The stock price is the markets estimate of the present day value of future earnings. It is not just quantity of earnings, but QUALITY of earnings that set stock prices.
So.... stock options let companies decieve investors in the present day. But investors will figure this out sooner or later. Once they do, the stock price will fall. When the stock price falls, what good does it do you to have an option?
My recommendation: Take cash, not options. If you get options, sell them. Who cares if it is worth pennies on the dollar. Sell them now, take the money and don't look back. We probably have one more fiscal year before stock options will have to be expensed. When this day finally comes, all the high tech firms will be significantly devalued in the market.
I used PVC tubing from the local hardware store. It is intended for plubing, but you can fit a lot of wires inside a 2 inch tube.
I use the tubing for vertical runs, similar to the pictures you included. I have this setup in a warehouse. The plastic PVC tubing is used to channel all the wires meeting at the hubs/switches/routers. Throughout the warehouse, I use steel 1/2" metal tubing to send the network cable to various jacks. This tubing was lying in a corner at the warehouse. I don't know if it is for plumbing or electrical conduit, but it looks very similar to electrical conduit tubing.
I went to the extra effort to run electrical power cords in separate tubes than data/communications CAT5 cable.
The tubing/conduit is resistant to being knocked, snagged, or cut.
One full year with no problems.
I get a newletter from ESRI and I have gotten it for the past 4-5 years. They ran an article about 8-12 months ago talking about python and how you can use it to write customized stuff for ArcView and ArcGIS. So I think you can use python with older ESRI software and I think that a lot of demo or tutorial python stuff is out there.
NO NO NO!!! Nobody sells data to the Census. They give it away as public domain data. They call it the TIGER files (Topographically intergrated geographic end reference). They did this in 1990 and again in 2000.
Mapquest.com and MS Streets use the public domain data and resell it. So does every other mapping company.
Does anybody remember the story of the GPS units and how the 9/11 terrorists used them? To summarize, they drove to NYC on September 10th with their GPS units. They stood b/t the 2 WTC towers and marked a waypoint. The next day, they flew airplanes towards this waypoint.
OK, OK, So what??? Well, they could have just read a USGS topo sheet to get those Lat/Long coordinates. Or they could have used any GIS package.
This is really scary to think about b/c almost every county has GIS data on their website, including land ownership, soil type, lat/long, impervious surfaces, building outlines, drainage, and more.
This is all free, easily accessible, and pretty accurate.
How does this hurt the US job market if you create a career for yourself by being a middleman b/t US businesses and Indian coders? This job was not there before you created it? Nobody is fired.
Yeah, VNC is what I was thinking. With one client, the first time I used VNC was on Halloween. She kept saying her computer was "haunted".
I think closing active windows (Alt + F4) at the most opportune moments could drive someone crazy. Especially if you did it all day, but only when they were almost done working on something. Like an outgoing email, the end of a web search, etc.
This is almost too cruel and too easy. You should have to work a little harder for your prank.
Not yet. I bought a WinTV USB for $20 on sale. I gotta admit, the windows driver works good under windows. Full screen video through USB 1.1 (playing GameCube games) looked good.
No luck under Linux yet. I need to figure out the right USB driver to use. There is a project called usbvision (http://usbvision.sourceforge.net/) that is supposed to offer a driver that works. I have had no time to play around with it. Once you get past the USB interface, the device is just a BT878 card. I assume it needs a bttv driver. I haven't bothered to get the USB card working under Linux. I am only using it to act as a viewer, not a PVR. So I don't mind dual-booting.
Also, Hauppage offers a diagnostic tool that runs under windows. It probes the USB tuner and tells you all sorts of technical data about it. It would be helpful for configuring under Linux.
Maybe I will try the USB tuner under Linux again. I just installed Fedora 2 on the laptop. Maybe something different will happen... Drop me an email later to find out if I ever got it working.
Nailer, you make a great point.
There is a general attitude from a lot of people that anything you do to make a profit is evil. And we should be ashamed for anything we do for profitability. Once anything "goes corporate", it is no good. Yeah, I will be the first to admit that there are some evil people working in corporations. Money makes people do bad things. I think we all know that. But most of us live in a capitalistic, free market economy.
Well, we all gotta live and support oursevles/families. Would you rather everyone be lazy and not try to work? There is nothing wrong with earning an honest buck. This company is not going to become the next M$ by selling MythTV boxes.
Working hard and adding value are good things. Customers reward this by buying your product. Making the PVR installation easier is a value-added benefit.
And aren't we all supposed to make sure we like our careers? I mean, you must like what you do to be happy at work. Well, I think the only reason we read slashdot is because we like to. And we use OSS because we like to. Therefore, wouldn't all of us be happy with careers related to OSS? So maybe the Australian PVR company isn't perfect, but don't they deserve a little recognition and awe?
Does anyone know about an open source equivalent to the analysis tools add-on option in Excel? This is where OO Calc is really weak. Also, does anyone know how to reference an entire column in OO Calc? Excel lets you define entire columns and use them in formulas, OO Calc does not.
I had to take two statistics classes that were taught out of Excel. I did my best to use OO Calc whenever possible, but the data analysis tools have no open source equivalent.
We all need to write our congressmen and let them know how we feel and what side we are on.
Maybe one of the talented programmers out there could make a simple website that will send a canned message to the appropriate congressman. Then we can all got to the site and quickly send the message.
Think about it... What in the hell does a congressman know about IT and operating systems? Shouldn't we give them advice on this one?
check out this GIS flavored Knoppix release. It has other GIS installed besides GRASS. It will give you an idea about other GIS on Linux.
http://www.sourcepole.com/gis-knoppix/
I agree. If a program could do all that, you would not have a job. You are the diagnostics. You are the one who provides fixes.
I find posting to discussion forums helpful for problems that I cannot figure out alone.
I have a dlink 704P. It has a parallel port for printer sharing and a serial port for dial up modem backup. Wouldn't that be cool to customize? It allowed me to ftp to it. I logged in as root. I dont have any permissions, though.
What to do?
We should not joke or laugh at this. The rate of change is what is alarming, not the change. 3/4 of the world's population lives w/in 100 miles of the ocean. All this land will be reclaimed by the ocean. A 0.3 degree change in temperature is HUGE, HUGE, HUGE. In one century, we can change the temp 30 degrees. The Athabasca glacier in Canada has retreated 1/4-1/2 of a mile since the 1860's. There is a visitor center standing where the glacier was. You won't laugh once this affects you.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a GREAT point. Quickbooks is another program that requires admin rights.
Also, I have noticed that the auto update service (daemon) on Windows will not show up by the clock on the taskbar unless you are logged in as admin.
CD's are a type of technology. Technology gets cheaper and better with time. Look at the personal computer over the last 20 years. Comparing CD's to oil is not really a fair comparison.
My comment about China was sarcasm, by the way. Usually, when Wal-Mart forces vendors to lower their price, it means jobs are likely to be outsourced to cheaper labor markets (ie China). However, I think we will still want our home grown musicians and that our musicians will not be replaced by cheaper foreign workers.
Therefore, this is a scenario in which Wal-Mart is bringing the consumer lower prices, but not necessarily eliminating US manufacturing jobs in the process. I am from North Carolina, a state that used to have a strong textile industry. We definitely feel the job loss due to outsourcing. And we can blame Wal-Mart and all the other big box retailers, if we want to.
Who knows, maybe the jobs of record company executives will be outsourced. This might make punk music fans happy.
Does this mean that our musicians will be outsourced to China due to cheaper labor?
... Obviously not.
This is one of the few industries that can withstand price reductions with little or no job loss. I am glad Wal-Mart is keeping the music industry in check. The price of a cheap plastic CD has hovered at $15 for two decades. We consumers deserve a price reduction.
One more note:
Be careful about your company's 401k plan. I am sure everybody knows that the key to investing is diversification. No matter where you invest, you should always have a diversified portfolio. However, many companies fund the 401k plan with stock options or company stock. This means your 401k plan is not diversified. This is extraordinarily harmful to those who stake their retirement on 401k's. Also, the company never contributes cash to the plan (stock options are a non-cash expense).
Be careful! Stock options are a mess. A stock option is a non-cash expense that is not recorded on financial statements (the Balance Sheet, the Income Statement, the Statement of Cash Flows). When you accept a stock option, you are choosing to replace real cash with a stock option. The option is income and you are taxed as if it was income. The option may have time limits on it. Your company better be really valuable by the time you can exercise your option.
Because high-tech firms have no cash or captial, they compensate employees with stock options. But think about it... if a firm has no cash, how do they have any value? Isn't the market going to figure this out soon? How will you ever cash in?
The accounting rules are changing, despite Silicon Valley lobbyist attempts. New rules will make companies EXPENSE options in the accounting period in which they were issued. This will have 2 immediate effects:
One more accounting benefit from stock options: When you finally exercise the option, the company pays the difference b/t option price and market stock price. This expense is tax deductible. By reduces taxes, you create a "gain". This gain is booked as income from continuing operations. Some high tech firms derive over 50% of such income from "gains" due to stock options being exercised.
Investors expect income from continuing operations to be a real indicator of a companies ability to produce future earnings. The stock price is the markets estimate of the present day value of future earnings. It is not just quantity of earnings, but QUALITY of earnings that set stock prices.
So.... stock options let companies decieve investors in the present day. But investors will figure this out sooner or later. Once they do, the stock price will fall. When the stock price falls, what good does it do you to have an option?
My recommendation: Take cash, not options. If you get options, sell them. Who cares if it is worth pennies on the dollar. Sell them now, take the money and don't look back. We probably have one more fiscal year before stock options will have to be expensed. When this day finally comes, all the high tech firms will be significantly devalued in the market.
Tell your CIO that we all think he is wrong.
I used PVC tubing from the local hardware store. It is intended for plubing, but you can fit a lot of wires inside a 2 inch tube. I use the tubing for vertical runs, similar to the pictures you included. I have this setup in a warehouse. The plastic PVC tubing is used to channel all the wires meeting at the hubs/switches/routers. Throughout the warehouse, I use steel 1/2" metal tubing to send the network cable to various jacks. This tubing was lying in a corner at the warehouse. I don't know if it is for plumbing or electrical conduit, but it looks very similar to electrical conduit tubing. I went to the extra effort to run electrical power cords in separate tubes than data/communications CAT5 cable. The tubing/conduit is resistant to being knocked, snagged, or cut. One full year with no problems.
I get a newletter from ESRI and I have gotten it for the past 4-5 years. They ran an article about 8-12 months ago talking about python and how you can use it to write customized stuff for ArcView and ArcGIS. So I think you can use python with older ESRI software and I think that a lot of demo or tutorial python stuff is out there.
So what? Point your missiles towards the mosiac'd out buildings.
Or, how about pulling out a USGS topo sheet from 1983 and finding the buildings the old fashioned way.
NO NO NO!!! Nobody sells data to the Census. They give it away as public domain data. They call it the TIGER files (Topographically intergrated geographic end reference). They did this in 1990 and again in 2000.
Mapquest.com and MS Streets use the public domain data and resell it. So does every other mapping company.
Does anybody remember the story of the GPS units and how the 9/11 terrorists used them? To summarize, they drove to NYC on September 10th with their GPS units. They stood b/t the 2 WTC towers and marked a waypoint. The next day, they flew airplanes towards this waypoint.
OK, OK, So what??? Well, they could have just read a USGS topo sheet to get those Lat/Long coordinates. Or they could have used any GIS package.
This is really scary to think about b/c almost every county has GIS data on their website, including land ownership, soil type, lat/long, impervious surfaces, building outlines, drainage, and more.
This is all free, easily accessible, and pretty accurate.
How does this hurt the US job market if you create a career for yourself by being a middleman b/t US businesses and Indian coders? This job was not there before you created it? Nobody is fired.
Sometimes, it is just win-win, not win-lose.
Yeah, VNC is what I was thinking. With one client, the first time I used VNC was on Halloween. She kept saying her computer was "haunted".
I think closing active windows (Alt + F4) at the most opportune moments could drive someone crazy. Especially if you did it all day, but only when they were almost done working on something. Like an outgoing email, the end of a web search, etc.
This is almost too cruel and too easy. You should have to work a little harder for your prank.
Not yet. I bought a WinTV USB for $20 on sale. I gotta admit, the windows driver works good under windows. Full screen video through USB 1.1 (playing GameCube games) looked good.
No luck under Linux yet. I need to figure out the right USB driver to use. There is a project called usbvision (http://usbvision.sourceforge.net/) that is supposed to offer a driver that works. I have had no time to play around with it. Once you get past the USB interface, the device is just a BT878 card. I assume it needs a bttv driver. I haven't bothered to get the USB card working under Linux. I am only using it to act as a viewer, not a PVR. So I don't mind dual-booting.
Also, Hauppage offers a diagnostic tool that runs under windows. It probes the USB tuner and tells you all sorts of technical data about it. It would be helpful for configuring under Linux.
Maybe I will try the USB tuner under Linux again. I just installed Fedora 2 on the laptop. Maybe something different will happen... Drop me an email later to find out if I ever got it working.
Nailer, you make a great point. There is a general attitude from a lot of people that anything you do to make a profit is evil. And we should be ashamed for anything we do for profitability. Once anything "goes corporate", it is no good. Yeah, I will be the first to admit that there are some evil people working in corporations. Money makes people do bad things. I think we all know that. But most of us live in a capitalistic, free market economy. Well, we all gotta live and support oursevles/families. Would you rather everyone be lazy and not try to work? There is nothing wrong with earning an honest buck. This company is not going to become the next M$ by selling MythTV boxes. Working hard and adding value are good things. Customers reward this by buying your product. Making the PVR installation easier is a value-added benefit. And aren't we all supposed to make sure we like our careers? I mean, you must like what you do to be happy at work. Well, I think the only reason we read slashdot is because we like to. And we use OSS because we like to. Therefore, wouldn't all of us be happy with careers related to OSS? So maybe the Australian PVR company isn't perfect, but don't they deserve a little recognition and awe?
Does anyone know about an open source equivalent to the analysis tools add-on option in Excel? This is where OO Calc is really weak. Also, does anyone know how to reference an entire column in OO Calc? Excel lets you define entire columns and use them in formulas, OO Calc does not. I had to take two statistics classes that were taught out of Excel. I did my best to use OO Calc whenever possible, but the data analysis tools have no open source equivalent.
We all need to write our congressmen and let them know how we feel and what side we are on. Maybe one of the talented programmers out there could make a simple website that will send a canned message to the appropriate congressman. Then we can all got to the site and quickly send the message. Think about it... What in the hell does a congressman know about IT and operating systems? Shouldn't we give them advice on this one?
check out this GIS flavored Knoppix release. It has other GIS installed besides GRASS. It will give you an idea about other GIS on Linux. http://www.sourcepole.com/gis-knoppix/
I agree. If a program could do all that, you would not have a job. You are the diagnostics. You are the one who provides fixes. I find posting to discussion forums helpful for problems that I cannot figure out alone.
I have a dlink 704P. It has a parallel port for printer sharing and a serial port for dial up modem backup. Wouldn't that be cool to customize? It allowed me to ftp to it. I logged in as root. I dont have any permissions, though. What to do?
We should not joke or laugh at this. The rate of change is what is alarming, not the change. 3/4 of the world's population lives w/in 100 miles of the ocean. All this land will be reclaimed by the ocean. A 0.3 degree change in temperature is HUGE, HUGE, HUGE. In one century, we can change the temp 30 degrees. The Athabasca glacier in Canada has retreated 1/4-1/2 of a mile since the 1860's. There is a visitor center standing where the glacier was. You won't laugh once this affects you.
Web-ERP is another option. I have only installed it, never actually used it. It has a nice GUI and it is all web-based.